The British “Sortlist” platform ranked Kuwait third after Saudi Arabia and the UAE in terms of its preference as an investment climate suitable for launching start-ups in the Middle East and North Africa.
The platform saw that the region in general has proven to be the destination of choice for new start-ups in 2022, explaining that emerging business projects attracted investments of $323.7 million this year through 66 deals held in June alone, and American investors had the lion’s share of these deals.
The platform encouraged investors to move their start-up projects abroad in pursuit of a suitable business environment, noting that it chose countries in the Middle East and North Africa, taking into account factors such as internet speed, public transport conditions, residents’ qualifications, office rental costs, electricity and the level of residents’ happiness.
The platform placed Kuwait City in the third place regionally in terms of the availability of a suitable climate for launching start-up projects, taking into account the high rate of literate people (96 percent), the low price of electricity and the good speed of the Internet, but it pointed to the somewhat high office rents.
The first place was for the city of Riyadh, which the platform considered the best city in the region for start-ups, whether in terms of low illiteracy level, Internet speed, electricity price, or even the level of residents’ feeling of happiness, which reaches an average of 6.49/10.
Dubai ranked second, with a massive internet speed that exceeds the speeds of the United Kingdom and the rest of the region’s cities, while the platform noted the ideal business climate in the emirate to diversify work and deal with global customers and employees.